It all happened in the blink of an eye for Marc Copani.
At 22 years old, the Syracuse-born Copani was a trainee at Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW) who moonlighted as a worker for the Chili’s restaurant chain.
Just over a year later, he was portraying Muhammad Hassan on national television, and by the summer of 2005 was en route to being a world champion.
Then, at 25 years old, after an angle on Friday Night SmackDown involving him became an infamous textbook example of when WWE pushes the envelope way too far, Copani had his reputation in wrestling tarnished and was out of a job.
Copani’s quick ascension was full of many highs, then a notorious low. The way things were set up, Copani could’ve become one of WWE’s biggest names. Instead, the actual results caused trauma that took him years to finally reckon with.
Before an episode of “Dark Side of the Ring” aired about his career on Tuesday, Copani sat down with POST Wrestling to discuss how he has made peace with his past.
The life and quick demise of Muhammad Hassan
Copani had little experience in the wrestling industry before his sudden WWE call-up. After a few years in OVW, the early part of which he spent under their amateur class, training only once a week apart from the WWE-endorsed talents like John Cena, he was signed to the world’s biggest wrestling promotion in 2004.
At first, Copani found the character he would soon play, Muhammad Hassan, quite compelling. In a post-9/11 society, Hassan was an Arab American constantly subjected to discrimination, profiling, and racism, a story that mirrored the realities of many.
“This was a character that was wronged,” Copani recently told POST Wrestling. “He did nothing wrong. This character’s family, this character’s people, community had done nothing wrong. They had been in this country, they had assimilated in this country, they held jobs, they paid taxes, and suddenly the actions of a few were affecting the lives of many, and he had a problem with that … And I loved that character, I loved that about him.”
Was it culturally appropriate that a man of Italian descent was playing an Arab American? The character started out with rough edges when it came to political correctness, but carried a social commentary that was relevant to the time.
The heel character established Copani on Monday Night Raw as WWE marched toward WrestleMania 21. He had worked three pay-per-view matches within just a few months, including a tag bout against Hulk Hogan and Shawn Michaels. Copani was getting quite a bit of attention.
However, that summer, things took a turn. In the build-up to a program with The Undertaker, which many believed would lead to a future title reign down the line, the character of Hassan changed drastically.
On a segment of Smackdown, Hassan dropped to his knees and summoned five masked men to take out the Undertaker. These men, instructed by Hassan to slit the throat of the Undertaker, took a wire to his neck as they choked him. Many saw the visuals of the segment heavily linking him to those of terrorists seen in beheading videos.
Copani had trouble with the character’s shift.
“My issue was that the direction we went took it away from this American citizen who was being marginalized and treated unfairly for no reason to one that relied more on religion and fanaticism and kind of became, ironically, a caricature of what he intentionally and originally despised at the beginning of the arc,” Copani recalled.
Once the taped episode of SmackDown aired, the timing of its release sent Copani’s character into mainstream scrutiny. While recorded earlier in the week, the segment premiered right after a coordinated series of terrorist attacks left over fifty people dead in London, known as the “London Bombings.”
The backlash was strong enough that UPN, the channel that hosted SmackDown at the time, ordered WWE to no longer feature Hassan on the Thursday-night program.
Hassan would go on to face The Undertaker at The Great American Bash later that year, but lost in an eight-minute bout. It ended up being his final in-ring WWE appearance.
Copani remembers the blowback, but believes he only fully understood the magnitude of the situation when mentioning to then-road agent John Laurinaitis that he was considering buying a house.
“Don’t buy the house,” Copani remembers being told by “Johnny Ace.” “That’s how I knew the character was done. We weren’t fighting it.”
‘I am busy, and I am happy’
Copani believes that he could’ve found a way to survive in wrestling after the end of his run as Hassan, but had simply lost the desire to be in the industry. He was ashamed and horrified. He was out.
“I could’ve been calling the writers every day, trying to push a different angle, I just didn’t,” Copani said. “I didn’t want anything to do with it. It was almost a complete and total avoidance of anything that made me think of wrestling.”
The “disappointment” and “pain” that was caused by his time as a WWE wrestler pushed him away. He didn’t wrestle, or do autograph signings, or even do interviews.
Time heals all wounds, as they say. And for Copani, it was the years away from wrestling that allowed him to fully comprehend what happened in his career.
“I had to face the career I had and the ending it had. I had to stop blaming myself for everything. I do believe in holding yourself accountable … At the same time, it was a matter of circumstance, and not a matter of me as a human being that ultimately led to the downfall of that character.”
Copani’s story, while a sudden fall from grace in the world of wrestling, has a happy ending in the bigger picture. He became a teacher years after leaving WWE, educating students at Hannibal High School in New York. Then, he parlayed his time in the career into becoming a principal, and by last year was appointed the Human Resources director for the school district of Fulton City in Oswego County, New York.
“I am busy, and I am happy, and what I do every single day is make a difference in over 3,000 kids’ lives, and probably more from all the things that I’d done over the last decade or so,” he said. “That allows me to look back on the pain and devastation that happened 20 years ago and appreciate that I did come out on the other side and that I do have a message about people who go through difficulties in life.”
Copani’s career is the latest profile on Dark Side of the Ring, covering his time as Muhammad Hassan. It aired for the first time on Tuesday night via Vice TV.
